My sons were also thrilled to get some of Hasbro's first Beyblade XTS tops, extra tall to have an advantage in the stadium. We received Tornado Leone and Tornado Pegasus to review. Photo by Patricia Vollmer.

First, we’ll discuss the stadium set. This is a (more or less) hexagonally-shaped stadium that comes with three interchangeable cores that you can switch in the center. The official product description states, “Customize the BEYSTADIUM with three battle cores: the Zip Core forces straightline movement, the Chaos Core brings chaos to the tops’ movement, and the Deflector Core brings craziness because it affects rightspin and leftspin tops differently! With the tournament grids and official rule book, you’re ready to do battle with all comers!”

According to my youngest son (age 6 1/2), “All of the three interchangeable core really affect all of the Beyblades differently. The yellow panel [Chaos Core] seems to cause the most damage*, the performance tip will get caught in a groove and lose spin power. The green one [Deflector Core] does the second most damage*, because the attack tops that usually move all over the stadium will get stuck in one of the grooves and lose power. The red one [Zip Core] does the least damage*, with this one the tops will spend the most time battling each other instead of getting caught in the grooves.”

*By “damage,” my son means the Beyblade loses the ability to win battles.

I observed my sons battling their assorted Beyblades in this particular stadium and noticed that this stadium is (a) small and (b) loud. My sons weren’t too particular about these issues, they enjoyed changing out the cores and observing the effects — the scientific method in action!

This is their smallest stadium. My youngest son has the Super Vortex Stadium, while my oldest received a Lightning L-Drago Stadium. Even though both the Triple Battle and Vortex stadiums are more circular, the cutout shapes in the Triple Battle stadium appears to give less space for the battling. Both of my sons pointed out that four Beyblades battling together, which can be done easily in the Lightning L-Drago (or any oblong stadium), was very difficult in the Triple Battle stadium.

The noise is definitely Mom and Dad’s observation. The seams between the stadium and the interchangeable cores, along with all the grooves in the cores themselves make for very loud battling. Many of the Beyblades make noise themselves, and some are definitely louder than others, but it seems that in the case of the Triple Battle stadium, all of the tops were quite loud.

The Triple Battle Set included two Beyblade battle tops: Meteo L-Drago and Galaxy Pegasus. One is a “right spinning” top and the other is “left spinning”.

The Triple Battle Set came with two Beyblade tops: Galaxy Pegasus and Meteo L-Drago. I was especially tickled to see any toy with the name "Meteo". Photo by Patricia Vollmer.

In addition to the Triple Battle Set, we received two tops from Hasbro’s Beyblade XTS line: Tornado Pegasus and Tornado Leone. We weren’t quite sure what to make of these. My sons are enjoying playing with them, and after several battles with them against non-tornado Beyblades, we discovered that using a Tornado Beyblade presents an advantage in the stadiums we have. My youngest son told me that the tornado Beyblades win “most of the time.” It sits higher than non-tornado Beyblades, and it also can tilt quite a bit without tipping over altogether.

I wandered into a World Beyblade Organization forum to see if older, more experienced users had any feedback and it wasn’t very complimentary. It was apparently deemed by the WBO that the Tornado series is not going to be competitive, but more of a younger-blader-friendly “toy.” Much of the feedback was lambasting Hasbro for taking a serious Japanese-inspired toy concept and adding all these twists to it for marketing purposes. The group cited several reasons for not allowing the Tornado models in tournament play:

The blades are one piece, compared to traditional blade that come in several pieces and can be customized by users for assorted purposes.

The Tornado blades have different physics, and therefore defies the “penalty pockets” in some of the larger stadium. Some in the WBO have suggested that Tornadoes can be a class of their own.

Hasbro launched the Tornado blades expressly for younger players, according to a Hasbro press release. But this doesn’t make much sense to me, since everything we’ve been using so far has been for ages 8 and up.

To my kids, who really enjoy their Beyblades, but aren’t super competitive necessarily, getting a large box with a stadium and four new tops was like Christmas in September to them! They weren’t concerned with whether the tornado tops would be legal in tournament play.

As for this GeekMom, I was happy to see my kids spending hours in healthy competition with toys that didn’t require batteries. I always enjoy seeing them use creative problem solving and the scientific method: hypothesizing, observation and drawing conclusions.

On a final note: each Beyblades top comes with a code with which you can enter your top online at BeybladeBattles.com. You can battle your tops in the virtual world and enter tournaments with other Beybladers around the world.